Lucja Balzukiewicz (1887 Vilnius - 1976 Lublin), Ostra Brama in Vilnius

Biography
She came from a family of Vilnius intellectuals. Her brothers also toiled in artistic crafts. Jozef was a painter and Boleslaw a sculptor. Lucja Balzukiewicz began her education in her hometown. She was initially educated at the local Ivan Trutnev Drawing School. She spent the years 1907-09 in Paris, where she met, among others, Henri Martin and Olga Boznanska, who had a strong influence on the young painter's early work. After a brief but fruitful stay on the Seine, she returned to Vilnius, where she lived until the end of World War II. She taught drawing at the Joachim Lelewel State Gymnasium. In 1939 she became a member of the Vilnius Society of Artists. After the war, in 1946, she moved to Lublin. There she joined the ranks of the Association of Polish Artists. She also belonged to the "Zachęta" art grouping. While she was still alive, two individual exhibitions (in 1962 and 1970) were held at the Lublin Art Exhibition Office. Her work was dominated by portrait studies and landscape compositions. From the interwar period come numerous landscapes from the Vilnius area, as well as Balzukiewicz's characteristic views of the interiors of Vilnius churches. An equally important group in her artistic oeuvre are the sacred paintings created for numerous temples.